TJ, carrying the bag, yanked the front passenger door open and jumped in. Paul pulled the back door open and dove in headfirst, followed by Larry, large and loud. He slammed the door closed and yelled.
"Go!"
The air in the car boiled with kinetic energy, but the scenery outside didn't change.
"Nope," Michael said. "Not until you say please."
The large man tried to articulate some sort of threat, but only produced a lowing noise.
The thin guy sitting shotgun looked sad but sounded giddy. "Oh no. That's not funny, man."
"Time, little brother," the guy directly behind Michael said. He put his hand on Michael's shoulder. "Gotta go. Not too fast. Slick road." Michael looked at his brother Paul in the rearview mirror, then stomped on the gas, pinning them all to their seats. The five-year-old green sedan, as anonymous as a telephone pole, zipped down Broadway toward Sullivan Square.
"Okay, ladies," Paul said, "get down so we can take off the stockings."
In shotgun, TJ pulled off the stocking mask as he slid out of his seat and into the foot well like liquid mercury.
"TJ," Michael said, "be a good fella and hand me my jug while you're down there."
"No, you can wait, Mikey," Paul answered from the floor in the back.
"Just need to loosen the straps a little," Michael said.
"Fuck! Stop fuckin' talkin'!" Larry was the size of a newborn killer whale, and now wedged in between the seats, he sounded near hysteria. "You're s'posed to be alone if anyone fuckin' sees you, you stupid fuckin' fuck. Just drive the fuckin' car, you fuck. Fuck the fuckin' booze."
"Aunt Betty'd slap your face," Michael said, "if she knew how her little Larry swore--"
"Shut up about my mother!" Larry barked.
"Easy, boys. Mikey, anyone behind us?"
Michael checked the rearview. "Just the dark."
At the Sullivan Square traffic circle Michael spun the car around the far edge, with the tires slipping, and then whipped up the crumbling street that ran along the short section of elevated road. A quarter-mile up, the car turned right at Middlesex Avenue and then broke off a fast right into the employee parking lot at the First National Stores grocery warehouse, where there must have been three hundred cars parked in the open dirt lot.
Michael slipped the Chevy Bel Air down to the row of cars against the chain-link fence and stopped at a dark '65 Ford Falcon. The three passengers got out. Paul keyed open the trunk of the Falcon, and they tossed in their guns, hats, stockings, and the money bag. TJ pulled off his sweatshirt, dropped it in the Falcon's trunk, and pulled out two license plates and a screwdriver. He moved to the front of the Chevy Bel Air, ducked out of sight, and popped up again before Michael had time to find his Zippo, chunk it open, and fire up his Winston. TJ paused at Michael's window on his way to the back of the Chevy with the second license plate.
"That's it for me," TJ said. He was wearing an Esso gas station T-shirt with the name Thomas over the pocket. "You suck to work with. I'm not going back to jail." Thomas Jefferson Moran walked to the back of the Chevy.
Paul knocked on the passenger window, and Michael leaned over and rolled it down.
"What's TJ saying?" Paul asked. He leaned in the passenger side as he pulled off his warm-up pants. Underneath a bulky turtleneck sweater he wore a white shirt and a red silk tie.
"Nothing, post-game jitters. You're all dolled up."
"Late date." Paul turned back and closed the trunk of the Falcon. He threw the trunk key over the fence, out into the growth of bulrushes in the marsh.
Larry got into the front passenger seat of the Chevy. He had worn a Patriots jersey during the robbery, now he had on a Led Zeppelin T-shirt.
"Rock on, man!" Michael said. He held his hand up for a high five.
Larry sneered. "One of these days, Michael."
Paul and TJ got back in the Chevy and Michael dropped each of the three at their own cars, which they had driven to the lot earlier that night.
Michael parked the Chevy, fished the vodka out, and took a drink. He got a rag from his back pocket, soaked it with vodka, and wiped down all the surfaces in the car that anyone might have touched. Then he tossed the Chevy key over the fence. He drank the last of the vodka, dropped back, and tried to spiral the bottle over, hoping to reach the oily creek, but it fell short and smashed into something solid, silencing the marsh.
He walked up two rows to his car, a black GTO. He put his key in the door, and felt the top end of his throat stretch itself wide. He turned his head and threw up beside the car. Wiping his mouth with the rag, he muttered, "Fuckin' egg salad."
He placed his feet carefully around the puddle, opened the door, and dropped backwards onto the driver's seat, pulling his feet in.
When he was done shaking, he woke the Goat and drove it to North Quincy.
The Sagamore Grill was the name on the liquor license, but it was commonly known as The Sag, partly because there was no actual grill. The only grill any of the patrons ever saw was the cross-worked iron bars at the Quincy police station.
On Saturday morning, Michael sidled up and placed his order with Bud, the day bartender. "Hi, neighbor, I'll have a 'Gansett, please."
Larry and TJ came in together, stopped at the far end, and ordered. Bud lifted the hose from behind the bar and squirted soda into a couple of glasses. They crossed the room to sit at a red square Formica table, way at the back. Michael took his beer and followed.
"Look at this guy," Larry said to TJ. "Beer for breakfast. My aunt's dying of cancer and her son's getting gassed every time I see him."
"When you're not here, I drink milk," Michael said. "I see you, I lose the will to live."
The front door opened and Paul came in followed by the sun, and by the time the door chopped off the outside light, he was cutting a path through the tables. Michael watched him move; fast, without hurrying; covering a lot of ground with deceptive speed. Paul sat down at the small table.
"Hey," Michael said. "I forgot to ask, how was your date last Saturday?"
"Good. Nice girl, but not the one. The search continues," Paul replied.
"Girl from work?" Larry asked.
"In a way. I met her when I took a customer to lunch. She was our waitress."
Paul was a sales rep for Triple-T Trucking, a union carrier that operated in the New England and the metro New York-New Jersey area.
"Which customer?" Michael asked. He was a driver for Triple-T, jockeying trailers around, making local deliveries and pickups.
"The traffic manager from Schrafft's Candy, he suggested this place, which, I found out too late, doesn't take credit cards. I didn't want to look like a chump, so when the check came, I pretended to go to the restroom, flagged down the waitress, said I didn't have enough cash on me. I was short a buck for the bill and had no money for a tip. I told her if she lent me a dollar and waited for the tip, it would be a good one. I went back the next day, gave her a fifty, and asked her out for Saturday. She said she was working; I said after. I'd be in the area."
Michael watched Larry and TJ do the quick nod, polite but impatient, waiting for Paul to get to the good part: their share of the robbery. Michael took a drink from his beer, brought the bottle down, and rapped the bottom against the tabletop a few times.
"Get it?" Michael said. Larry and TJ stopped nodding and looked over at him.
"Cash only," Michael said. "No cards? That was our restaurant last Saturday night."
Larry's jaw fell like the trapdoor on a gallows. TJ shook his head.
"And you went back to pick up the girl?" Larry asked.
"Shhh. Turn it down," Paul said. He leaned back against the booth in his bright white starched shirt. No matter how grimy the environment, somehow Paul remained spotless.
"Did you know?" TJ asked Michael.
"I just figured it out," Michael said. "Anyway, how did we do?"
Paul shrugged. "Better than we'd do tonight, now that they're going to start taking credit cards.
That's what they get for trying to shortchange the IRS." He flashed a phony smile, followed by a real one; he was charmed by his own insincerity.
"My brother, the patriot," Michael said.
"You get eighteen hundred each," Paul said.
"You get twenty-four," TJ said.
"That's the deal. Twenty-five percent more," Paul said.
"That's thirty-three, isn't it?" Michael asked.
"Okay," Paul said. "Then you get seventy-five percent of what I get, which is twenty-five percent less. Whatever makes you feel better. Either way, it's like five weeks take-home driving a truck."
"What do we do next, boss?" Larry asked.
"Keep in mind," TJ interrupted, "I'm gone. Mahla wants to move to Florida. She don't like the snow."
"What snow? It's June," Michael said.
"Fuck off, man. It gonna stay June?"
The front door opened and they watched a figure lurch into the shadows before TJ spoke again.
"No, I hear you," Paul said to TJ. "Especially with the toy guns. But this new thing has no need for weapons, real or otherwise, which I knew you'd like. We're going to liberate a truckload of cigarettes." Paul smiled like a dust bowl Bible salesman, going face to face to share his look of joy and wonder.
"Cigarettes? From where?" Michael asked.
"One of the car loaders, Blue Ribbon Distributors."
"What's a car loader?" Larry asked.
"A warehouse with a railroad siding. It transfers freight between rail cars and trucks."
"Can't be from Triple-T. We don't haul smokes, or booze either," Michael said.
"We do now. My new boss, Guy Salezzi, is the nephew-in-law of Mr. T.T. Tortello, so I guess he can change the policy. They're going to start using us on cigarette loads to the BPM warehouse in East Bridgewater next week. I've called on Tony Bentini in the Blue Ribbon traffic office for fourteen months and never got a sniff of the work. Why? Because company policy is we won't take cigarettes, and he won't give me any other loads unless we take them too. Nobody wants the smokes. But Salezzi went to Fordham with Bentini. So now we're getting business because they're pals. They're going to give us one load, see if BPM is okay with us. If so, we'll get more."
Larry smiled at his older cousin. "You got some balls, man. You want to knuckle a load the first week?"
"We better act while we can, right? What if we lose the account?"
Michael said, "I guess we're going to ignore the fact--"
"The rumor," Paul cut in.
"--that Mr. T.T. Tortello is a member of the Gambino family."
"Tortello started that rumor so no one would steal from him," Paul said. "This is good for forty grand. Split evenly. We each put ten in our poke." Paul leaned toward TJ. "Think: forty thousand bucks. A few like that and we quit. Become homeowners, family men, good citizens."
"God bless America," Michael said.
"I spent six months at the farm," TJ said. "Watching corn and punkins come up out of the ground. I'm not going back. How long you think you can steal from your company before they start investigating and whatnot?"
"They'll look at the Teamsters," Paul said. "I'm management."
They stared at Michael the Teamster. He snapped open his Zippo, touched the Winston to the flame, and inhaled. Then he smiled around the cigarette and clapped the lighter closed.
"Is Michael going to get this load?" TJ asked.
"No, they pick up at 3 p.m.," Paul replied. "He starts at 6 a.m. He's on OT at 3. They'd give the pickup to a straight time guy. We have fifty drivers that start at 8."
"Good chance I'll deliver it, though," Michael said. "There's only two of us at 6."
Paul nodded. "BPM wants all loads backed in and ready to unload when their crew starts at 7 a.m. Which means the driver will come from the 6 start." He looked at his brother. "If Rosie gives you the P&G or the Jordan Marsh load, you call the apartment, let the phone ring once, and hang up. If you get the right load, don't call. Even Rosie might notice if you did. If you don't get this one, we'll have to hope you get the next, assuming there is a next."
"And listen, Michael," Larry warned, "lay off the booze! Someone might smell you."
Paul turned to Michael and raised his eyebrows but didn't look directly at him. "He makes a good point, Mikey. Work has to come first. By the way, go see Ma today, will you? Eat something, take a nap, and go see her."
Michael pulled the GTO up behind the old man's Rambler, across the street from the house, a small brown bungalow with a screened porch. A strip of sidewalk and a patch of grass separated the house from the street. If an eighteen-year-old kid who stood six feet tall tripped in the gutter and fell forward, his head would bounce off the bottom cement step. The morning after the night that Michael proved that, his father had thrown him out.
Paul leaned against the kitchen sink holding a glass of water, while their father sat in his chair at the same spot at the same table they'd had since Michael was a small boy.
"Here he is, Dad," Paul said. "I'll go slay the fatted calf."
"Michael. How've you been?" His father stood and offered his hand.
"Hey, Dad." They shook. "You say that like you haven't seen me in years. I was here, what, two weeks ago?"
"Yeah? Seems longer."
"How's Ma?"
"Go up and see. She's awake, we just put her in the chair."
Upstairs in the front bedroom, their mother was propped up in her wheelchair looking out at the street. While on chemo for breast cancer, she had a stroke, or a shock, as his aunts called it. Her left hand had curled into a claw, and her whole left arm was as rigid as the left side of her face was slack.
"Hi, Ma." He kissed her forehead and put his chin on the top of her head. His eyes stung, and he squeezed the bridge of his nose until it hurt enough to stop the tears. He kissed her cheek and sat at the foot of the bed, hunched forward, his elbows on his knees, as they both peered out the window.
"Michael?" Her voice sounded like she'd swallowed shards of glass, and the way she said his name broke his heart. "When will it stop?"
Michael stared down at his feet. "Pretty soon, Ma."
It was a warm day and the windows were up as life passed by on the street below. Kids on Sting-Ray bikes with towels draped around their necks hollered at each other on their way to Wollaston Beach; young mothers pushed strollers carrying big-headed toddlers; cars rolled by, windows down, volume up, sharing the thump with one and all, like it or not.
It was hard for Ma to speak, but his three sisters were here every day, and their kids visited several times a week, so she had more family news than he did. The result was Michael stretched out sideways on the bed with his hands folded on his stomach, talking to her about his softball team, which was just fine. What he said didn't matter, she just needed the comfort of his voice.
He heard the steps squeak and a few seconds later his father came into the bedroom. He sat in an armchair and they talked about Yaz and the Red Sox. If Michael wanted to avoid the AA jive he had to stay on his toes. When the conversation began to slow, he moved rapidly to other safe topics, like politics, war, and religion. Yet the old man could spot the smallest opening and race through it, turning an innocent remark about the weather into a tale of winos in winter. Many were the trolls pulled from under a bridge and into a meeting by a hazy memory of free donuts--but not all who were called by the pastry were chosen by the higher power to live clean, dry lives, and those who were gave thanks to the program, the program, the program.
His mother was snoring softly in her chair. She'd sleep on and off until late evening. Most nights she'd lie awake in the dark, listening to Larry Glick on the radio.
"She's been asking me if I think you're going to stop soon," his father said.
"Yeah, I'll stop by again soon." Michael looked at his watch and stood up. "Now I gotta scoot. I'll be back in the next few days, okay?"
"Yeah," his foiled father said, a note of resignation in his voice. "Okay."
Paul was stil
l downstairs and he walked out with his brother.
"Did you ever deliver to Pat's Vending down in Providence?" Paul asked.
Michael looked up to his mother's window as they walked across the street to his car. "A number of times. New candy and tonic machines, mostly."
"They own a ton of cigarette machines too, in bars and strip joints. The owner's son is going to take the Blue Ribbon load. He'll get top dollar in the machines."
"This won't do your new boss Salezzi any good, will it?"
"Probably not." Paul smiled and shrugged. "It's a tough game."
At 6 a.m. on Wednesday, Rosie the dispatcher handed Michael the BPM delivery papers. "You get our first load from this shipper, Mosely. Try not to screw it up."
Michael walked out of the terminal into the truck yard and climbed up into his tractor, a spotless red U-model Mack. He turned the key to the on position and pushed in the black rubber nipple on the dash, kicking the diesel to life. At the top of the long sideview mirror he saw dull gray smoke roll out of the stack. He fed the noisy beast some fuel, and the smoke, now thinned by heat, shot out of the pipe. He pushed in the clutch, wiggled the stick into second, and, with the heel of his hand, whacked the pentagonal red button on the dash. With a sharp whoosh, the tractor brake was off and so was he, over to the trailer pad, searching for the right trailer, number 5432. There were five rows of trailers, about a hundred in all, but the high-value load would be in the first row. He found it, turned the truck away from it, and stopped fast, skidding the eight tires on the rear axles. He looked at the three mirrors while he wiggled the stick into reverse, took a bead on the trailer, and rushed the tractor backwards at the box. He stopped when the fifth wheel was about an inch from the bottom of the trailer. He pulled out the red pentagon to lock the air brake, slipped the vehicle into neutral, opened the door, and swung himself out.
Standing on the grate at the back of the tractor, between the tractor and trailer, he unhooked the hoses for the trailer brakes and the light cord that hung on the back of the Mack, then coupled them with the connections on the trailer, swung back into the cab, popped it in reverse, and rammed the fifth wheel under the trailer. The box lifted as the Mack wedged underneath, the kingpin locked, and Michael put the stick in first gear, left the trailer brake on, and tried to pull back out from beneath the box. He rocked the coupled unit violently, trying to break the grip. The last thing he wanted was to make a turn out on the road and see the trailer uncouple and go zipping off alone. The trailer felt light, but he was used to pulling loads out of P&G; a full load of soap could weigh forty-two thousand pounds.